A federal judge in Boston has extended an injunction preventing the Trump administration from enforcing new nationwide Postal Service requirements for mail ballots, keeping the restrictions on hold as North Carolina begins sending the first ballots of the November midterm elections.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
A federal judge on Friday extended a nationwide block on new U.S. Postal Service requirements for mail-in ballots, preventing the Trump administration from implementing the changes as states begin sending ballots for the November congressional elections.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston issued a preliminary injunction barring enforcement of the Postal Service rule, replacing a 14-day temporary restraining order she imposed last week while considering the broader request from Democratic-led states and voting-rights organizations challenging the regulations. Talwani was appointed to the federal bench by President Barack Obama.
The timing of Friday’s ruling is significant because the election process is already underway. North Carolina became the first state to send mail ballots for the November elections Friday, with additional states expected to follow.
Talwani concluded that requiring election officials to overhaul existing mail-ballot procedures only weeks before Election Day presented serious constitutional and practical concerns.
The challenged rule would require states participating in the new Postal Service system to provide USPS with lists identifying voters receiving mail ballots. Both the envelopes used to send ballots to voters and those used to return completed ballots would have to carry unique barcodes meeting Postal Service specifications.
Under the rule, USPS could refuse to deliver ballots that did not comply with the new envelope requirements or that were associated with voters whose names did not appear on the information supplied by state officials.
Voting-rights organizations and the states challenging the system contend those requirements could prevent otherwise valid ballots from reaching voters or election officials, particularly because states have already completed substantial portions of their preparations for November.
Numerous election offices have already printed their ballots and envelopes.
The challengers also argue that the administration exceeded its constitutional authority because election administration is primarily entrusted to the states under the Constitution, subject to congressional authority over federal elections.
Talwani agreed that the plaintiffs had demonstrated sufficient grounds to keep the requirements from taking effect while the litigation proceeds.
Her latest order follows several weeks of rapidly moving litigation over President Donald Trump’s effort to alter the handling of mail ballots.
Trump signed an executive order in March directing changes to mail-voting procedures after repeatedly questioning the security of voting by mail and alleging widespread fraud in connection with his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden. Those allegations did not produce evidence sufficient to overturn the certified results of the 2020 presidential election.
USPS subsequently developed the new ballot-handling regulations to carry out provisions of Trump’s order.
The Justice Department maintains that the Postal Service possesses authority to establish requirements governing mail moving through its system and has characterized the new envelope specifications as comparatively modest changes.
Government attorneys have also argued that the rule would not transfer authority over voter eligibility from the states to USPS.
State election officials, they said, would continue determining who is legally entitled to vote by mail. The Postal Service requirements would instead establish conditions governing the handling of election mail.
The legal dispute intensified Thursday when the Trump administration went directly to the U.S. Supreme Court and asked the justices to lift Talwani’s temporary restraining order before she ruled on the request for a longer injunction.
The Justice Department told the Supreme Court that the new Postal Service system was intended to prevent the mails from being used to facilitate voter fraud and argued that the federal government should be permitted to put the regulations into effect.
The request marked another appearance before the Supreme Court in the continuing litigation.
Last week, the court’s 6-3 conservative majority lifted an earlier order from Talwani that had prevented the administration from imposing the restrictions.
That Supreme Court decision did not resolve the underlying question of whether the Postal Service requirements are lawful. Instead, the majority concluded that the earlier challenge had been brought prematurely because USPS had not yet finalized the rule through which it intended to implement Trump’s directive.
Once the Postal Service finalized the regulations, the states and voting-rights groups returned to court and challenged the rule itself.
Talwani responded by issuing the 14-day temporary restraining order that the administration asked the Supreme Court to lift Thursday.
Her preliminary injunction Friday now supersedes that temporary order.
The administration promptly filed notice that it would appeal the latest decision. Its Supreme Court request concerning the earlier temporary order was already pending as the legal landscape changed with Friday’s ruling.
The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was also considering an administration request to set aside Talwani’s original temporary restraining order but had not ruled before she issued the preliminary injunction.
Beyond the constitutional dispute, implementation has become an increasingly important issue as the election draws closer.
The United States has roughly 10,000 election jurisdictions, and changing ballot-envelope specifications after election materials have already been designed or printed could require extensive revisions on a compressed schedule.
Talwani found it implausible that states could complete the changes in time for the approaching election and expressed concern that even relatively minor problems with the new system could prevent ballots from being delivered.
The technical system that would support the new requirements also was not fully operational immediately before the ruling.
A Postal Service official said in a court filing Thursday, Sept. 3, that the online portal through which states would submit voter information had not yet become active.
The official said the system could become available to states choosing to use it sometime during the week of Sept. 7.
That left election administrators facing the possibility of having only weeks to integrate a new federal system into voting procedures that had been planned months in advance.
Friday’s injunction permits states to use the Postal Service’s new system voluntarily while preventing the federal government from requiring compliance with it. AP reported that no state had announced plans to participate voluntarily as of Friday.
Mail voting is permitted in some form in all 50 states.
Twenty-nine states allow voters to request mail ballots without providing a specific reason, while eight states conduct elections entirely or predominantly through ballots mailed to voters.
The broad use of mail voting magnifies the potential effect of any nationwide changes to Postal Service handling procedures during a federal election.
Concerns over implementation were heightened this week after U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., released a statement attributed to an anonymous federal whistleblower.
The whistleblower alleged that USPS was moving too quickly to construct and deploy a new ballot-processing system and warned that the effort could interfere with reliable delivery during the election.
The allegations added to arguments from the states and voting-rights groups that the federal government was attempting to introduce significant procedural changes without enough time for election officials or the Postal Service itself to prepare.
The government disputes the characterization that the requirements would improperly interfere with state-run elections and argues that USPS may regulate the design and processing of material carried through the federal postal network.
At the center of the litigation, therefore, are two related questions: how much authority the federal Postal Service has to impose specialized conditions on election mail and whether those requirements can lawfully be introduced so close to a federal election when state voting systems have already been established.
The controversy also reflects the larger dispute over mail voting that has persisted since the 2020 presidential election.
Trump has repeatedly sought tighter controls on mail ballots, while opponents argue that federal restrictions imposed close to an election could prevent eligible voters from successfully casting ballots.
With the first November ballots now entering the mail, Friday’s injunction leaves the existing procedures in place while those questions continue through the federal courts.
The Trump administration is seeking appellate intervention to revive the regulations, but unless a higher court overturns Talwani’s latest order, USPS cannot require states to comply with the new recipient-list and barcode system as the 2026 midterm election proceeds.
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